With an Aching In My Heart

After eons of being battered against the hard edge of a stationary continent, a handful of shells had been reduced to nothing more than grains of sand, slowly inching their way towards the shallows with the unending rotation of the tides and the moon. One particle of sand found itself washed forward on the weight of a lumbering wave, it careened through patches of kelp and seaweed until it hit a great pillar upended in the shallow water. The wave receded, and the curious particle of sand found itself left high and dry, stuck to the pillar. The sand tickled the legs of Leon Van Damme as he stood knee deep in the cool waves of the Pacific. With the sweet, cool air swelling inside his lungs, and the salt from the wind catching in his nose, Leo could barely believe that he’d actually arrived. His toes slowly dug their way deeper into the wet sand, as he turned to look back over his shoulder at the Ray’s Liquor box, which sat lightly on the hard sand, only a few trinkets from his former life to weigh it down.

A day earlier, Leo sat in the dingy tri-county airport, which was still not far enough away from Castle Apartments. He zoned out, his eyes tracing the aerodynamic curves on the jetliner outside, when the volume swelled on a television that was mounted crookedly on the opposing wall. First catching the concerned look on the face of an airline employee, Leo felt the cold vein of fate creep up his spine, as he focused on the dusty screen. A middle-aged woman with shoulder-length brown hair addressed the public, the news station logo spinning on its axis, the words “BREAKING NEWS” splayed in crimson red across the bottom of the screen. Her voice was deep, and her attitude professional as the footage cut to the headshots of two people Leo recognized. One was an Irish woman he remembered from Castle, the other a blurry shot of a man with only the word “Cleake” to distinguish him. The woman, Sile N’Bhroin had been stabbed multiple times by this Cleake person. The newscast then cut to a surly old black man standing in front of Castle Apartments, who explained that the two were neighbors in the same building. A frigid shudder violently rocked Leo where he sat; the icy chill had settled in his veins and began to solidify in his gut. That could have been him, thought Leo, as he looked skyward and kissed his thumb, then throwing the sentiment to the Heavens. He praised whatever Gods there might be for adorning him with enough strength to escape the satanically twisted, cursed walls of Castle Apartments.

After his flight landed in Santa Barbara, Leo found himself hailing a cab in a numb stupor. Arriving at the cheap extended-stay hotel where he’d shipped his boxes, he found himself being haunted by one box in particular. The box stood out, “THE PAST” scrawled with sharpie onto all sides. Grabbing the box in a bear hug, Leo sprinted out of the hotel and down the beachside road that lead to the local pier. He ran, careening past gorgeous girls wrapped in exquisite color, past gray haired men with surfboards and tan lines, past happy children spinning barefoot in the sundrenched grass, he picked up speed as he reached the long weathered pier. Sweating, Leo threw off his old tweed jacket; catching the wind it tumbled over the edge, liberated, it swept down the beach in the salty wind. Leo reached the end of the landing in a frenzy, almost plummeting over the guardrail with the momentum. He dropped “THE PAST” at his feet. As he looked west into the heart of the late-afternoon sun, Leo reached into the box, and pulled out the first thing he touched. It was the retro-style alarm clock that he’d kept at his bedside for the entirety of his sentence at his old apartment. Thinking back on it, this crummy red-plastic clock had been first thing he’d bought for room 1011. Tossing it up and down in his hand for a moment, mulling things over, he reared back and lobbed the clock into the absolving waters of the Pacific, screaming like an nineteenth century exorcism, Leo howled, “THAT’S FOR SILE, GODAMN IT!” Again Leo reached into the box this time retrieving his Atlantic City souvenir ashtray, the edges of the cheap plaster were chipped, and the image was faded. Without half a thought he chucked the ashtray as far as he could, Leo watched as it hit the crest of a wave in a pathetic splash and begin to sink into the indigo water. Leaving the heart wrenching scream for the sadly departed, he muttered “that’s for the damned who can’t escape Castle. That’s for Cleake.”

Leo continued throwing the contents of his past into the ocean, each item representing one of the sad lost Lonelies from back east. Taking a horribly scratched Sting single in his hand like a Frisbee, he threw the thing towards the ever-loving horizon – an unending slew of curses towards Devon Tresp accompanying it to the deep. Finally Leo reached the bottom of “THE PAST,” and deliberated over the last two items. The first being his favorite Hula girl lamp that danced when you turned in on, the second being the old cracked New York snow globe. Holding the snow globe in his hand, and feeling the cracks with his thumb, Leo resolved to lob it, and keep the Hula girl. Raising the globe back over his shoulder to launch it far out past the pier, he lost his grip, and it slipped out of his hands and crashed to pieces on the weathered boards. Kneeling down to pick it up, he found that the skyline was intact, but the glass dome had finally shattered, and the little people of mini-Manhattan had been liberated from their endless winter. Leo held the little island up to the sun, and observed the little pieces of silver confetti as they caught the light, and filled the little town with a brilliant shadowless glow. “Never mind,” thought Leo as he placed the snowless island back in the box, next to the Hula girl lamp. He picked the box back up and headed back down the pier, determined to make it to the ocean himself. He kicked off his ratty old loafers and felt the warm California sand under his heels, recognizing that his own dome had been shattered, and now all that was left was brilliant sunlight, and the mirrors that caught its reflection.

So there Leon Van Damme stood – up to his thighs in the rising tide, watching the sun begin to dip over the horizon. The last tendrils of its fiery luminance held onto the sky, pulling every color in the known world over the edge with it. Turning his eyes skyward, yet again, Leo could swear he heard the word “Amen” come whispering across the darkening waves, he laughed under his breath, a smile growing from his chapped lips. “Amen,” he whispered back, as he loosened every muscle in his body, and fell backwards, arms spread-eagle, into a passing wave. The cool water washed over his craggy features, his gray hair, and his smiling face, as he sank to the sandy bottom. Finally Leo was completely engulfed in the all-forgiving water.

 Emerging with a gasp, he ran his fingers through his hair, and shuffled through the shallow waves towards his box, turning at just the right moment to catch the last glimmer of the sun as it ducked entirely over the edge of the west.  

THE END.